


BiteZ

by shaenie



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Hale Fire, Alternate Universe - Porn, Alternate Universe - Werewolves Are Known, Biting, M/M, Neckz 'n' Throats, Underage Stiles (16)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-08
Updated: 2014-03-08
Packaged: 2018-01-15 01:21:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,600
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1285900
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shaenie/pseuds/shaenie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Derek works for a skin mag, Stiles is a High School Journalism student, and they're entirely unsuitable for one another, which doesn't stop them at all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	BiteZ

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Love Runs Wild](https://archiveofourown.org/works/771875) by [DevilDoll](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DevilDoll/pseuds/DevilDoll). 



> Notes: Immense thanks to green_grrl, without whom there would be lots of apostrophes and missing apostrophes and some confusion about who could bite whom, and when and how. (There still may be some confusion about this, but be assured that if there is, it’s my fault, not hers.)
> 
>  
> 
> Another authors Note: AU where werewolves are known, the Hale family lives, and who is a werewolf and who is not are not the same as canon. Took some serious liberties with canon, and with the age of consent for purchasing certain adult material. There’s more to it than this, but the author reserves the right to make it a surprise. Also, werewolf skin mags, because yes.

The Hales work closely with the Beacon Hills Sheriff’s Department, the City Council, and even the Argents; it’s part and parcel of keeping the peace in a city where the werewolf population is a quarter of the town population. Beacon Hills isn’t the only city that boasts such integration, but it’s one of the more orderly ones. Sheriff Stilinski and the councilmen from both the Hale family (Peter) and the Argent family (Chris) are surprisingly both delicate and diligent in that respect.

The fallout of that is that all three families are very familiar with each other. At first that had been awkward and strained, but after five years, it seems normal.

So when Derek swings down the stairs into the living room and sees Stiles Stilinski deep in conversation with Derek’s mother, it’s a matter of note, but not a matter for alarm. At least, not until Derek’s mother gestures broadly at Derek to join them.

Stiles shoots to his feet when Derek approaches, looking nervous and chagrined even as he’s grinning the whole time. Derek notes that he’s taller than the last time Derek had seen him, his shoulders a lot wider, though he still doesn’t fill out his gangly body. Derek tries to think how old he is now, and can’t quite come up with a number. Their age difference is big enough that the two of them hadn’t really got to know each other well.

“Well, I’ll leave you to it,” Derek’s mother says, standing up as well. She’s got a smile quirking at the corner of one lip, something mischievous in her eyes that Derek can’t read.

“Leave us to…?” Derek fishes, but his mother swirls out of the room with a ripple of her skirt, and leaves Derek looking to Stiles for answers.

“Uh,” Stiles says. “Derek, hi. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean for that--” he gestures broadly, arms flailing a little, but managing to indicate his mother and Stiles himself “--to happen.”

“What to happen?” Derek asks, and Stiles face sort of contorts with grim hilarity.

“Talking to your mom,” he says. “About, I mean. Talking to your mom about what I wanted to talk to you about. But honestly, I don’t see how I could have avoided it. There were at least ten people in the room, and your sister sniffed my head and wanted to know what I was so excited about, and then _everyone_ wanted to know, and your mom sort of herded everyone away from me, and after that it seemed rude not to… uh, say.”

Derek can easily picture the scene; he doesn’t doubt Stiles’ recounting of it. “Okay. But I still don’t know what you’re doing here, Stiles.”

Stiles looks a little pleased. “I wasn’t sure you’d remember me,” he says.

“You’re the Sheriff’s son,” Derek says. “Of course I remember you. The year we integrated you wore a foam werewolf hat.”

Stiles looks less pleased at that. “You can’t hold that hat against me. I was eleven.”

“I liked that hat,” Derek says.

“Oh,” Stiles says, looking pleased again.

Derek isn’t impatient, really. He’s got plenty of time before the shoot. “Why don’t you have a seat,” he says, because maybe Stiles will be more focused if he’s sitting. Stiles bobs his head and sinks back down onto the couch that he’d been perched on the edge of before. Derek takes the chair his mother had been in. “So, I’m assuming that you came here to see me?” Derek asks.

“Yeah, um.” There’s a beat up gray satchel between Stiles’ feet, and Stiles has both hands clenched around the strap. He tugs at it uneasily, his gaze lighting on Derek’s face for a few seconds before butterflying away again. “Yes. I do work for the Beacon Hills High Gazette.” It comes out pretty close to a question. Derek just nods patiently. “I tried to get you when you were giving interviews last week, like, officially, but I guess a press card from a high school newspaper doesn’t get you very far. Which is pretty unfair, by the way, since if I’m of age to buy a copy, I should be of age to go to the press panel.”

“BiteZ isn’t the only thing shot in that studio,” Derek finds himself soothing. “No minors are allowed on the premises at all.”

Stiles slumps. “Yeah, they told me,” he mutters. 

“Will the high school paper even let you do an article on BiteZ?” Derek wonders. “It’s not like you can only give the paper to kids sixteen and up.” 

“No, no, It’s nothing like that,” Stiles says, pinning him abruptly with earnest eyes. “I mean, obviously it touches on what you do, but the point of the interview was to interview _you_ specifically, to find out who you are and why you do it and whether it’s had a negative or a positive effect on your life. It’s not about the extremely soft core porn, really. I wanted to write about you, because of who your family is, and being born human in a wolf family, and whether or not…” Stiles trails off, possibly worried that he’s offended Derek.

He hasn’t, but Derek wants to think for a minute.

“So you’re thinking of an expose here?” Derek says slowly.

“I feel like that word has unnecessarily harsh connotations,” Stiles says, his face pinkening. “Technically, it wouldn’t be inaccurate, but I was really thinking of it more like a getting to know the man behind the face. And, uh. Chest.” Even as he says it, Stiles gaze shifts to Derek’s chest and then jerks back upward again. “I mean.”

Derek doesn’t smile only because he’s pretty sure Stiles will take it the wrong way. “So you want to know what, then?” he asks.

Stiles grins a little. “I want to know everything. I mean, that’s kind of how I operate; I’ve been told I’m a steamroller when I’m researching something, and I don’t know when to stop asking why, and there will probably be things you don’t want to answer, and I definitely won’t print anything you don’t want to have on the record, but yeah, just things like what it’s like to be human in your family and whether or not that had anything to do with what you decided to do for a living and if you were ever nervous, and do they really cover you with makeup, and do you eventually want the bite, and if you do, why haven’t you just had your Alpha do it, because I think most kids in a born wolf family decide right after high school, so why…?”

Derek rests a hand on Stiles knee to shut him up, and Stiles starts nervously, but he does close his mouth. “Do you really think Beacon Hills High School has a wide enough audience base for this? I mean, it sounds like it’s either going to be really long, or a series of articles.”

Stiles beams at him; Derek almost feels the weight of that smile, and it kind of knocks him a little sideways. “I don’t know for sure,” Stiles confesses. “But I have permission for at least one article from my Journalism teacher, and if it goes well, the moon’s the limit, really.” 

Derek considers this. “How confident are you in your writing?”

“The only thing I’m better at is researching,” Stiles says seriously.

“One interview,” Derek says. “We’ll do one, and if I like it, I’ll send it to the editor of the Beacon Hill’s Courier. If she likes your work, and assuming you still want to do it, the Courier will probably carry anything the High School might not let you print.”

Stiles’ smile threatens to eat his face, and Derek can’t help but smile back at him. “When can we start?”

“Not today,” Derek says. “I have a shoot.” Although honestly, the interview sounds like it actually might be more fun than the shoot. “I’ve got time this weekend. But we don’t do this here. Everyone in the house can hear every word we say.”

He hears Laura snickering from the hall.

Stiles flushes and rolls his eyes a little, but nods.

“I have some time this weekend. Let’s go someplace public,” Derek says, because he does have some sense of self preservation. Yes, the photoshoots he does are available to anyone sixteen years or older. Most of them don’t even show as much skin as Derek would reveal going to the beach. But this is still an underaged kid, the _Sheriff’s_ underaged kid, and he does not want to deal with that kind of backlash.

“Sure, of course,” Stiles says, still smiling. “Coffee good for you? There’s a GenRoast a couple of blocks from the school.”

“That’s fine. Do I need to bring anything?” Derek asks.

“Just yourself,” Stiles says brightly, hands gripping and pulling at the strap of his bag again.

**

Sitting in the coffee house waiting for Stiles, Derek is having a hard time remembering why he’d agreed to do this. He’s generally pretty private about his private life, and this isn’t the first time he’s been asked to do in-depth articles and has turned them down. If he’s honest with himself -- and he’s not sure he wants to be -- at least some of it had been the sheer amount of hapless and enthusiastic charm that Stiles had exhibited. 

Being born human to a family of werewolves doesn’t give him the same kinds of power that a true werewolf possesses, but he’s stronger and faster than most humans, and he can sense… not a lie exactly. He can’t hear Stiles’ heartbeat. But he’s got a bullshit meter a mile wide, and Stiles hadn’t set it off once.

Stiles stumbles into the coffee shop only a couple of minutes late, his eyes scanning the tables before they light on Derek. He brightens immediately, smile wide and eyes dancing. He makes his way over to Derek, only bumping into one table on the way, and Derek has to bite his lip not to laugh. He gets it, he really does. It hasn’t been so long since he was an awkward teenager that he doesn’t remember what it was like.

Stiles drops his messenger bag beside the table and flops into the chair across from Derek. “I don’t know why,” he says, “but I was sure you weren’t going to show up. Like I’d get here and realize that I’d hallucinated you saying you’d come.” Stiles twists his mouth to one side and arches both brows. “Em-barr-ass-ing,” he sort of sing-songs.

Derek laughs.

“Oh!” Stiles exclaims. “Coffee. Oh, God, yes, coffee. I’ll be right back.” And he’s up and out of his seat; he ping-pongs off of two chairs on his way to the counter, one of which is occupied, and apologizes to the occupant over his shoulder while his feet continue toward the counter. All in all, it’s not that surprising when he hits the counter and then dances around on one foot in a quick circle, silently mouthing, “Fuck, fucking fuck,” as he tries to hold onto his other foot.

Now other people in the coffee shop are taking notice. Most of them, Derek notes, seem sort of exasperatedly amused. Derek suspects this is Stiles’ usual stop for coffee, and the regulars know what to expect.

Behind the counter, a grinning blonde hands Stiles a cup. Derek’s coffee had come in an oversized ceramic mug with the shop logo on it. Stiles coffee comes in a paper cup with a lid.

Yeah, they definitely know Stiles here.

“Thanks, Erica!” Stiles chirps and takes a healthy swallow of his coffee at the same time that he’s digging for his wallet.

“Stiles!” the girl behind the counter, Erica, scolds. “Remember what we do?”

Stiles puts his coffee onto the counter. “One thing at a time,” Stiles says in a long suffering voice. He gets out his wallet and pays for the coffee before picking up his cup again and conscientiously carrying it back to their table, where he sits down _before_ he starts to chug it again.

Only after he’s downed a considerable portion of it does he set his cup carefully to one side of the table -- Derek can only imagine the kinds of accidental burns that had ingrained that habit into him -- and gives Derek a slightly bemused smile.

“And _still_ surprised you’re sitting here,” he says, and waves his arms. “After all that.”

“You’ll grow out of it,” Derek says, and lets himself grin a little. “Probably sooner than I did, since you’re a werewolf.”

Stiles looks wistful. “I don’t know. It’s a medication thing, a, well, the way that Adderall interacts with my system, and I’ve tried to go off of it, but amazingly, I’m _much_ worse without it. Like, I’m practically nonfunctional. Defective werewolf, right here. Proof that superior genetics don’t always trump hyperactivity and an inability to focus. Or lack of grace. I’d be happy with just some grace, really.”

Derek thinks he’s absolutely adorable in his awkwardness, but doesn’t think Stiles would necessarily like to hear it. Instead, he says, “But lots of people grow out of ADHD, too, so there’s still hope.”

“Dare to dream,” Stiles’ says, smirking a little self-deprecatingly. “Either way, I’m going to write an awesome story about you and win the Gazetti this year.”

“Gazetti,” Derek repeats.

Stiles waves a hand. “It’s not the highest goal to aim for, but _I’d_ be happy.”

“Well, we want you to be happy, so let’s see what we can do,” Derek says. Stiles beams at him. He bends to grab his bag and haul it up onto the table, but one end is hung on the carry strap, and instead he manages to upend the entire contents of the bag onto the floor.

“Mega shit,” Stiles says, and scrambles down onto the floor to start shoveling things back into the bag. Derek reaches down to help, and catches a glimpse of a familiar magazine logo. He snags it while Stiles is still sweeping stray papers and ballpoint pens back into the bag.

It’s the April issue of BiteZ. Derek on the cover is wearing low slung jeans and an open dark purple button up, and looks like he’s trying to bore a hole through the camera with his Blue Steel. 

Derek kind of wants to facepalm, but he flips it open anyway -- it falls open naturally to his spread, and he sort of wants to grin, and is also flattered and a little turned on at the same time.

On the floor beside Derek’s knee, Stiles freezes and tips his face toward Derek, inhaling deeply. 

Derek sighs, because there’s nothing else he can do about it, and glances down at Stiles. Stiles is motionless, as absolutely still as Derek has yet seen him. His eyes are bright amber, and Derek tries not to find it hot. He’s a kid, _underage_ , absolutely off limits, and not Derek’s type at all anyway. Then Stiles leans a little toward Derek’s knee, and Derek slowly pulls it back. If he goes home scent marked by Stiles, his mother will kill him. Slowly.

Stiles blinks, eyes shifting back to brown, and stands up slowly, clutching his bag to his chest. He’s pink from hairline to neck, and for once seems speechless.

Derek is composing a: “This is not a big deal, nothing happened,” response in his head when Stiles’ gaze lands on the magazine Derek is still holding. He flings his bag into the empty seat next to him and makes a lunge for the magazine. Derek, almost entirely on instinct, snatches it out of reach. Stiles’ mouth opens and closes and then opens again.

“That’s just, uh,” he says hoarsely. “You know. Just screwing around. I mean, I don’t think, obviously you…”

More to try to make sense of Stiles’ ramblings than because of any interest in the photo spread, Derek looks down at it. Then he blinks, and bends forward over it.

The pictures are definitely of Derek. He remembers posing for them, he remembers seeing the prints. He also remembers that he hadn’t had a mark on his body.

Derek in Stiles’ copy of BiteZ is sporting several bite marks, and Derek has to really study them for several seconds before he understands that they’re drawn on. It’s just that they’re so meticulously done, and so uniform in size, and so artfully curved around the lines of Derek’s chest and one bare thigh, that they really do look almost real.

Derek looks up at Stiles, brows arched.

Stiles sinks into his chair. “So, yeah,” he says fatalistically. “There’s that.”

Derek says the first thing that comes to mind. “These are really good, Stiles.” He'd be hard-pressed to distinguish them from the expensive Photoshop work the artists for the racier magazines do.

Stiles’ eyes widen.

“I mean, I was _there_ , I saw the glossies, and I still had to really look at them to tell they weren’t real.”

Stiles’ lips quirk into a hopeful smile.

“You could make a fortune with these online, if it weren’t for the copyright infringement,” Derek says, smiling. 

“You are seriously the coolest person I have ever met,” Stiles says earnestly.

“Have you done others?” Derek asks.

“Ah, no,” Stiles says, blushing. “I mean, the Sheriff is my dad, and I’m old enough, but everyone tells him everything I do, so it’s weird and awkward, and I really don’t want to have that kind of talk with him, and I kind of used up my best friend line of credit asking Scott to get me this one, so.”

Derek laughs out loud.

“We always have back issues,” he says. “I’ll see if I can get you the entire run.”

Stiles’ mouth drops open like a baby birds. Derek is unwillingly charmed.

Derek shrugs. “Should I bring them with me next time, or have them shipped to your house?”

“Um, shipped?” Stiles asks. And then, “Next time?”

“It’s a series of articles, right?” Derek reminds him gently.

Stiles visibly gets his feet up under him. “Right, exactly, assuming this one goes well, and maybe even if it doesn’t? I mean, if my Journalism teacher doesn’t approve a follow up, I was thinking I might want to go ahead anyway, because you’re right, the Courier might pick them up, but even if they don’t, they’ll be good for my portfolio. If you don’t mind. I mean.”

“I don’t mind,” Derek says, smiling. He takes a moment to glance through the rest of the photos of the shoot, taking note of where Stiles apparently likes to bite, and then closes the magazine and passes it over the table to him. Stiles slides it into his bag, smiling a little.

“Okay,” he says, looking a little bemused. “If it works for you, I’ll start and you can let me know if there are any specific questions or topics that you’re uncomfortable with.”

“That’s fine,” Derek agrees.

“I’m going to try to do this chronologically, then,” Stiles says. “This way I get to know you better, and I’ll be able to ask better questions later on.” Stiles digs through his bag for a pen and a yellow legal pad, and starts off with, “When did you realize you weren’t going to shift?”

**

Derek is lying belly down on the couch in the living room, reading about the founding of the ACLU, when something paper flutters through the air and lands on his back. He looks up at Cora, unimpressed.

“He’s got a crush on you so hard,” she says simply, and just like that, Derek knows who she’s talking about and what’s on his back. He squirms around to try to reach a corner of it without getting up, fails magnificently, and then just tips his body toward the front of the couch until it falls off onto the floor. 

It’s thin and flimsy, about what Derek would expect from a high school newspaper, but he flips rapidly through it anyway, more excited than he has any rational reason to be. He can feel Cora smirking at him, but he ignores that, too.

The interview is on page two, right under something sports related that Derek doesn’t care about.

_The first thing you should know about Derek Hale is that **none** of that is photoshopped. He really is that good looking._

_No, wait, that’s the second thing._

_The **first** thing you should know is that he has a gorgeous smile, the kind that traps you into smiling back against your will. As soon as I’m done here, I’m emailing the Editor of BiteZ to request a shoot where Derek is smiling, just page after page of smiles; I think an issue where he’s just smiling his face off would sell out in a heartbeat. I’m going to move it up to my #1 request, even before Derek Hale: Biting His Lip, and Derek Hale: THONG!_

_You should also know that he laughs with his whole body, and that he can make it clear that he’s not laughing **at** you, even when he has every reason to do so (because as we all know, I’m awkward, and I wasn’t any less awkward than usual during the interview, so he definitely could have laughed at me at some point and would have been entirely justified)._

_And then you should know that Derek first realized he was never going to shift when he was four years old. He understood that he was different, and he was never going to be like the rest of his family. He was the only human in a family of werewolves, and he was alone. “It was the most isolating event in my entire life. It was like I suddenly lived with strangers who were keeping something from me. I didn’t understand that it wasn’t something they could give. I only understood that I was not allowed,” he tells me._

Derek reads on, riveted. He remembers every question, he remembers Stiles outlining the article, he remembers every word he had said, but Stiles had worked some kind of magic over it. It’s nothing added, it’s not embellished or anything like that. It’s just _more_. It all feels realer, reading it on the page, and it all feels new again, like fresh wounds, but not in a bad way. In a total change of perspective way.

The article only covers up to when Derek had started high school, and he remembers Stiles telling him that it isn’t intended to be a hook for permission to write another article, but that stories sometimes just happened that way organically, and that Derek had had so much life _before_ BiteZ that it wouldn’t be fair not to give that life equal word count.

He reads it again, and has to agree. While the story definitely leaves the road open for other stories, this part of the story that he’s holding can be enough all on its own. That even if Stiles never writes another word about Derek, this story is whole.

Derek likes his privacy, and he would have sworn on anything anyone asked him to swear on that he would never, ever do something like this, but twenty minutes later he’s sending the link to the article to The Beacon Hills Courier, because somehow, at some point, Stiles has made doing this feel important. Important to Stiles, yes, and Stiles had never tried to deny that, but important to _Derek_ , even if he doesn’t know why exactly.

**

Derek has a shoot the following Friday. He girds his figurative loins, and invites himself upstairs to talk to Boyd, the Editor.

“Let me guess,” Boyd says, his face as neutral as ever. “This isn’t about Derek Hale: Biting His Lip or Derek Hale: THONG!”

Derek covers his eyes, halfway between hilarity and humiliation.

“He really sent those,” Derek says.

Boyd sighs. “And about a dozen others, including Derek Hale: Plumbers Crack and Derek Hale: Please Just a Hint of Pubes.” Derek tries not to die laughing; he can clearly picture Stiles laboring over his suggestions, completely serious, but cheesing it up anyway, because he just couldn’t help himself. Boyd says, “But if this is about you smiling your face off, I think that’s something we could give a try.”

Derek smiles his face off, and Boyd rolls his eyes.

But as Derek turns for the door, Boyd says, “I read the kid’s article. It was good work.”

Derek nods a little. “I thought so, too.”

**

Stiles calls Derek at seven a.m. on Saturday morning. Derek groans and rolls over, rubbing at his face and trying to parse Stiles’ gleeful babble. Shooting had gone late the night before; not surprising when trying out a whole new theme for a spread, but Derek thinks it turned out well. He got glossies for Stiles, and may have included some shots that wouldn’t make the magazine, but had included biting his lip and just a hint of pubes. He’s unsure of the wisdom of giving them to Stiles, but he knows he probably will anyway, just because he can imagine the way Stiles’ face will light up.

But it will be a cold day in hell before Derek does THONG! 

“Seriously, when can you meet me,” Stiles demands, and Derek knows he’s missed most of the conversation so far, but can’t help whining,

“Stiles, it’s seven a.m. I do soft core porn for a living. Those kinds of things happen in evening to night hours. I am not awake. I am asleep. Call back in three hours.”

“Derek, I have a deadline!” Stiles hisses. “I have, in fact, _two_ deadlines, now, and thank you for that, I will love you forever, and you’ll always be my favorite. Now get out of bed and I will take you anywhere you want for breakfast and coffee, but I have to do this _now_.”

“Why, Stiles?” Derek groans. “Why do you have to do it now?”

“Because sometimes there really is a zone, and sometimes you really can get knocked out of it,” Stiles says, hissing again, angry cat werewolf, and Derek smiles.

The sad thing is, Derek does know there is a zone and you can get knocked out of it. It doesn’t happen to him often, but there have been shoots that started out fine and went off the rails at some point.

“Damnit,” Derek says.

“Pleeeeeeeeease, Derek, please please please please,” Stiles begs.

Derek sighs. “All the coffee I can drink,” he insists. “All the bacon, too.”

“Yes, anything, where?” Stiles sounds like he’s grinning now, and Derek feels his lips curling up in reaction. 

“Underage,” Derek mouths silently. “Sheriff’s son.”

Still, he says, “Not in public. I’m too tired for public. You come here or I’ll come there, but I want low lighting and sweatpants friendly.”

“I know you don’t want,” Stiles says. “I mean, your family can hear everything, but. Well, it’s not like my Dad couldn’t if he wanted to, and he’s home for the day.”

“Stiles, my room is soundproof. It was my 16th birthday present, and I’m comfortable saying it was a relief for everyone. Besides, I changed my mind; I don’t want to drive. It’s far.”

Stiles snorts. “It’s not far, but fine, you baby. Do I need to stop to buy bacon, or will there be some there for me to cook?”

“We eat bacon. We eat our body weight in bacon. There will be bacon,” Derek says tiredly. “Come over. Make coffee and bacon. Then I might, I _might_ get out of bed and let you grill me.”

“I’ll be there in twenty minutes,” Stiles promises, and hangs up.

Derek groans and rolls over and goes back to sleep almost instantly.

The next thing he knows is his mother opening the door and saying cheerfully, “Stiles is here, Derek. He has a gallon of coffee and five pounds of bacon, which he says you requested as a bribe for getting up this early.” His mother sounds amused with a faint hint of concern.

“Article,” Derek mumbles. “Deadline. Zone.”

“Is that supposed to make sense?” his mom asks. “Why were you so late getting in? Shoots don’t normally take that long.”

“Smiling for Stiles,” Derek says groggily.

There is a pause. “Is this something I should be concerned about?” she says, and there is Alpha in her tone. Derek’s eyes snap open and he shoves himself upright.

“No,” Derek says, and then shakes his head a little. “He may be a little bit enamored of me, but it’s not like that. I mean, he saw me in a… well, you know. So it probably colors what he thinks about me. But he’s not the kind of person that feels entitled or anything.”

His mom chuckles. “That’s good to know, but I was actually asking about you, Derek.”

And he can’t lie to her, that’s the bitch of it. “I like him,” Derek says slowly. “But he’s young, and I’m not going to do anything illegal or immoral, Mom.”

She comes into the room proper and closes the door behind her.

Derek is justifiably alarmed.

“Do you want him to bite you?” she asks, Alpha creeping into her tone again. In spite of that, she sounds a little hopeful.

Derek considers the question carefully, and then answers as well as he can. “Not quite.” He sighs. “I mean, he’s closer than anyone has been. But I’m not sure yet. Not sure if he’d want to. Just. He can’t, anyway. He’s too young.”

“There’s no legal age limit to give the bite, actually,” she says. “Just to receive it. A bite from a beta might take a little while to actually turn you, of course, but it would eventually take, with your bloodline being what it is.”

Derek lets his head fall into his hands. “Why would you even tell me that?” Though it’s the part about the age limit thing he’s protesting; he’d already known that it was possible for him to get the bite from a beta.

She doesn’t answer. “I’ll send him up. I’ll even let you close the door; I know this is very personal for you. But I need you both to behave.”

“I’ve never even touched him, Mom,” Derek says truthfully.

“Touching isn’t the only way to be intimate, Derek,” she says. “I want you to be happy, but I do not want you to do anything precipitous.”

“I promise,” Derek says, and wants to point out that he doesn’t do precipitous, that’s Laura and Peter and the twins, but doesn’t bother.

His mother leaves the room and Derek flops back onto the bed. He does not want to be awake, not even for Stiles, but he drags himself out of bed and slides on a pair of sweats anyway, because there’s something perilous about the idea of Stiles being in his room while Derek is naked in bed.

“Bacon,” Stiles announces, and slaps a plate onto Derek’s desk. “Coffee,” he continues, and presses a huge travel mug into Derek’s unresisting hands. Then he gives Derek a long look and says, “Maybe you should put a shirt on.”

Derek gulps down some of the almost-too-hot coffee and hands the mug back to Stiles. He rummages in his bureau until he finds a white t-shirt and pulls it over his head.

He glares defiantly at Stiles, daring him to try to make him do anything else, but Stiles grins at him. “You’re like an adorable angry muppet in the morning,” he says, and hands Derek back his coffee.

“And you’re a manipulative, sadistic… something. Shut up.”

Stiles laughs brightly. “Have some bacon,” he says fondly.

Derek does. It’s good, crispy, and he scarfs down about a quarter of it before it occurs to him that Stiles might want some. “Bacon?” he offers, sheepish.

Stiles sinks down next to the desk where Derek is eating and plucks a piece off the plate. “Thanks,” he says. He eats another half a dozen pieces or so, and then makes a pleading face at Derek until he sighs and hands over his coffee.

They sit like that in silence for another minute or so when Derek realizes that Stiles is basically sitting at his feet, and he has to get up and relocate to the bed before his thoughts can become inappropriate. Stiles scowls when Derek takes the coffee with him, but doesn’t follow.

Instead he digs in his bag -- Derek had not even noticed the bag -- and pulls out the familiar yellow legal pad and a pen.

Before he can ask anything, Derek says, “I have something for you, but I’m not sure if it will knock you out of the zone.” He does it solely because he’s anticipating the way Stiles will smile, and he’s impatient.

Stiles perks up a little, but looks genuinely conflicted.

Derek doesn’t sigh. “It can wait until after,” he says.

Stiles gives him a small, grateful smile. “So, I’m betting high school was pretty tumultuous for you,” he says carefully. “Anything I shouldn’t bring up?”

Derek thinks about it for a long moment, but eventually shrugs. “Honestly, high school was difficult enough in so many different ways that there’s no one thing I specifically want to leave out. I mean, I’d leave the whole experience out, but I understand why I shouldn’t, if you want the whole story.”

Stiles winces a little. “You don’t have to do this, you know,” he says seriously. “I mean, obviously there is nothing else I’d rather write about right now, but other things will come along. If it’s too much, or even if you just don’t want to, that’s okay.”

And Derek would kind of like to take him up on it, but… Stiles is magic with words. And Derek can’t scent desire like a werewolf can, but he can still sense Stiles’ desire to tell Derek’s story.

“The real problem with high school,” Derek says slowly. “There were lots of problems, really, but the one that really shaped my life was that I was suddenly surrounded by werewolves that weren’t in some way related to me, and it changed the way I felt about certain behaviors. Scent marking was a pack thing until high school, and then it was a flirting thing, a romance thing...”

**

Stiles looks as tired as Derek feels when the questions and answers are done. “Shit,” he says, and Derek nods. “That…” he says, and then doesn’t seem to be able to finish the sentence. Derek nods again, but this time he holds his travel mug out.

“You promised me all the coffee,” he says hoarsely, and Stiles quirks a little grin.

“That’s true, I did,” he agrees and gets up and takes Derek’s mug. He disappears out the door without another word, and Derek rubs at his face roughly. Then he gets up and digs out the folder of photos for Stiles, because the mood desperately needs changing. He drops it down on top of Stiles’ legal pad and then returns to the bed, which he’s started thinking of as minimum safe distance.

“Underage,” he whispers. “Sheriff’s son.” He reflects on how he hadn’t meant to lie to his mother. He’s not even sure that he did. On the other side of Stiles’ careful but probing questions, maybe he hadn’t wanted to bare his neck for Stiles. On this side of it, he’s almost sure he does. But only almost sure. Because he recognizes the problems inherent in stirring up these old memories and revelations. He might want Stiles to bite him. But he also might just want someone to alleviate that old-but-constant-now-raw-again pain, and it would be unfair to use Stiles that way.

Stiles returns with his mug and hands it over. It’s not until he’s settling down by the desk again that he notices the folder. “What’s this?” he asks, nimble fingers already tugging it open.

“I told you I had something for you,” Derek says, and manages a small, but genuine smile.

Stiles tugs the photos out and for a moment, just stares at the top one. Then he’s flipping through them rapidly, his face open with delight. “Are these from last night? Look at you smile, oh God, I was sooo right! Did you do these for me?”

“My Editor apparently got an email,” Derek says dryly.

“These are gorgeous,” Stiles breathes, flipping a little more slowly now. “Derek, these are amazing!” Then his hands still and he stares down at the photo in his hand, looking a little poleaxed.

“They’re not printing the last few,” Derek says. “Those are just for you.”

Stiles looks at him, mouth a little open, his eyes dark. “Thank you,” he half-whispers, his voice unsteady. His eyes flick down to the photo, and then back up to Derek. He’s abruptly blushing and Derek feels his own body responding to that look on Stiles’ face. Stiles tips his head up and scents the air, and he’s flashing amber eyes at Derek again. This time there’s the barest hint of fang, too, and Derek has to make himself look away.

“I should go,” Stiles murmurs hoarsely, and Derek hears him shoving things into his bag. “I… thank you, I mean, not just for the photos, but, for… the rest. I know it was bad.” He pauses for a long moment; it stretches out until Derek has to look back at him. “You were brave,” Stiles says solemnly.

Stiles drops something on the foot of Derek’s bed, and then is gone.

Derek sits at the head of his bed for at least two minutes, just breathing and smelling Stiles’ scent still in the room, and trying to think about what the hell he’s doing, but all he can think of is the flash of Stiles’ fangs curved against his pretty pink lips.

Eventually he crawls down to the foot of the bed and picks up the magazine Stiles had dropped there. It’s issue fourteen, so November of last year. Derek on the cover is wearing distressed jeans with lots of skin showing through and a thin black scarf. There’s a post-it stuck to the front.

_I ended up with two of these. You mark up yours and I’ll mark up mine, and we’ll see where we overlap. S._

It really hits home for the first time that Stiles is thinking about biting him. That maybe Stiles’ understands why Derek might choose a beta for the bite, since being a born to a wolf family, he actually has that option. He had known about the fantasy aspect of it, of course; he had seen the other issue that first day, but they had been strangers then. Stiles’ copy of April had been just a fantasy. This is different. This is Stiles not only thinking about _biting_ Derek, but also thinking about finding out where Derek would want to be bitten.

It jolts down Derek’s spine, half-pleasure, half-fear, this _possibility_.

He’s almost sure he shouldn’t, but he’s already searching for a pen.

**

Derek opens his bedroom door Friday morning and is struck by the weird hush of the house. Fourteen people live in Hale House. Except during the full moon, this silence isn’t just uncanny. It’s unnatural. He pads down the stairs barefoot, circles the empty living room restlessly, investigates the completely empty kitchen. He checks the library and the rec room and the den. He even checks the basement.

At a loss, and starting to feel alarmed, he goes back upstairs to the bedrooms. He raps softly on Laura’s door, and after a few moments, hears her moving around inside. She opens it just enough to look at him, and her eyes are red and swollen with tears.

“Laura?” he asks helplessly, and she shoves something out at him, pressing it against his chest; he captures it there automatically. It’s a newspaper. “Oh, Laura, don’t. It’s okay.”

She lets out a choked little sob. “I’m sorry, Der.”

“For what? For being my sister? There’s nothing to be sorry for.”

“For not knowing how much it was hurting you,” she says, tears still trickling down her cheeks. She opens the door a little wider and jerks him half-inside, rubbing her face against his neck and chest fiercely. She shoves him back almost as abruptly. “Go away for awhile,” she orders. “I’ll get it together.”

She shuts the door in his face.

Derek clutches the paper to his chest and makes his way back to his own room, where he closes and locks the door. The page with the article on it is still folded to the top and Derek stares blankly at it for at least a minute before he sits down on his bed and starts to read.

_... still in High School when he realized that what the bite meant for him was different than what he thought it should be._

_“It was like everywhere I looked, someone was nipping at someone else, playfully, but not for play. It was all flirting and foreplay, and nothing like anything I’d seen at home. Before I really knew it, I was looking at the guy sitting beside me at lunch and wondering what it would be like if he bit me, or watching the girl with the long red braid from Calc and wondering what it would feel like to have her hair all spread out around me while she bit me. I didn’t even know, then. It wasn’t until at least a year later that I realized that I couldn’t take the bite from my Alpha, my mother. I couldn’t take it from anyone in my family. It was sexualized in my mind, and it would be impossible and wrong.”_

_For a while, Derek held out some hope of meeting someone that might be interested in bringing him over, but things were complicated, and pack dynamics made the equation nearly unsolvable._

_“I didn’t want to leave my pack,” he told me. “I’d have had to find someone that was willing to join the Hale pack, but they were all like me. They didn’t want to leave their own homes, not for anything less than a real connection, and I didn’t know how to make one, really. I never have. Not that it mattered, since I couldn’t even offer membership to my pack without the permission of our Alpha, and I was pretty sure she wouldn’t invite a strange werewolf into our territory for the sole purpose of turning me.”_

_I can’t imagine what it must have been like for Derek. He was surrounded by werewolves that were more than willing to turn him, but that he couldn’t accept as anything less than something incestuous, and was unable to make a connection with another werewolf without being willing to lose his entire family, the only people he already had deep connections with._

_“I don’t really connect to people like that, right away. It takes a lot of time and effort and patience for me to feel really comfortable with someone, and most teenagers don’t have that kind of patience. The idea of leaving my pack for a stranger’s just so I could take the bite was unthinkable. It was like my skin was on inside out, like I was raw nerve endings all the time. I knew what I wanted to be, but there was no way to get there. There’s still no way to get there without compromising myself.”_

Derek sucks in a deep breath and holds it until his chest hurts, and then lets it out.

He knew it was going to be like this. And, as always, Stiles’ writing handles the topic deftly. Reading it like this, on the page, is still painful; Derek still feels the pull of this pain every day. But it changes it, too, it highlights it in a different direction. 

He understands why Laura is upset -- and probably everyone else in the house as well -- but he’s almost calm about it.

He had accepted that he might never get the bite years ago. He isn’t at peace with it, but he’d accepted it as a possibility.

But he had known his family hadn’t ever understood. They didn’t want to lose him, but they didn’t understand why he didn’t just go out and meet a nice werewolf and let his or her Alpha bite Derek, and join up with that pack and live happily ever after. Derek doesn’t form emotional attachments that easily -- Stiles is...Derek doesn’t know what Stiles is; an aberration? -- and the article goes into that, too, touching on the few physical relationships he’s had and the one romantic relationship he’d had, which had gone down in flames.

Stiles knows the details, but hadn’t included them, and Derek wouldn’t have been upset if he had, but he’s glad anyway. Bringing Kate Argent’s name into the light might make things ugly, at least for a while.

And now, everybody knows, and it’s a _relief_. The idea that he won’t be fielding questions about his personal life for a while is a relief.

And there’s a fragile hope there, too, something balancing out some of that old pain.

Stiles had known everything, and he had still left the magazine. Stiles had known that Derek wouldn’t consider leaving his pack just to get the bite, and Stiles _still seems to want to bite him_. 

Stiles’ father, the Sheriff, is an Alpha; his pack are primarily his deputies and their mates. Stiles is a beta, and it’s possible that he would inherit the Alpha if his father died, but it’s also possible that he will stand aside for whichever deputy is best suited for it. Those kinds of Alpha abilities could be passed over if the pack as a whole thinks it’s for the best, and Stiles… Derek is almost sure that Stiles doesn’t want to be the Sheriff. If that’s true, Stiles probably already knows he won’t have a proper place among his pack without his father. They would never throw him out; lots of the Sheriff’s pack aren’t in law enforcement. But they aren’t quite the same kind of pack as the Hale pack is. Their pack serves a different purpose in the community and functions in a different way.

The Hale pack is about family and belonging and never being left behind even if you happened to be born without the ability to run on four legs.

Maybe Stiles would thrive here with his clumsy hyperactive lack of focus and his charming, manic grin, and the bright joy in life in his eyes.

Derek shakes himself out of the mini daydream he’s having and sits up, the paper still clutched to his chest.

Something has grown solid in his chest, something he is by no means certain of yet, but which he feels firmly enough to start making some kind of plan around it. He needs to talk to Stiles, and he needs to talk to his mother. He honestly isn’t sure which he should do first.

He ends up deciding Stiles, because no matter what he hopes or plans, he can’t just guess at what Stiles’ place in them will be.

He calls Stiles, intending to leave a voicemail; he knows Stiles is at school. Instead, Stiles picks up on the first ring.

“Derek?” Stiles asks, his voice nervy and uncertain.

“Yeah, it’s me,” Derek says. “Are you okay?”

“Am I… heh. I was going to ask if _you_ were okay. Aside from everyone here crying at their desks over your manpain, and glaring daggers at me like _I’m_ responsible for your high school experience, I’m doing fine.” Stiles still sounds nervous and rambly, but his voice seems steadier at hearing Derek is okay. “So, really, I had no idea. I mean, I knew it was… harsh and hurtful, but I had no idea I was about to alienate the student body. And I’ll bet you get a dozen offers for the bite before the day is out.” Stiles sneers that last sentence, but there is a tense undercurrent to it.

“I don’t want it that way,” Derek says. “If I did, I’d have taken one of the approximately four hundred fanmail offers I’ve gotten.”

Stiles huffs out what is almost a laugh.

“Listen, though,” Derek says, and then isn’t sure what to say. _Do you want me enough to join my pack, or vice versa? Do you think about what my blood tastes like? Are you ready for this, or are you still trying things on to see how they fit you, because I can’t be one of those things._

“Can we… I mean. Derek, can I come see you?” Stiles stammers out.

“Yes,” Derek says immediately.

“I mean today,” Stiles clarifies. “Like, I mean right now, contributing to the delinquency of a minor, my dad might arrest you, right now.”

“Stiles,” Derek says firmly. “You can always come over. Whenever you want to. I’m not afraid of a little jail time.” He smiles a little.

“I’ll be right there,” Stiles says, and hangs up.

**

Derek’s mom is outside in the garden. Usually she’d be working; she says planting and weeding and watching things grow soothes her. Today she’s just sitting. There is a cup of coffee at her elbow. Derek can tell just by looking at the line of her back that she’s read the article. Because he can’t do anything else, he steps out the back door and settles into a chair next to her. He’s relieved to see no evidence of tears, but her face is a little drawn. She takes one of his hands in both of hers and just holds it for a minute.

“I understood,” she says finally, and looks down at Derek’s hand. “Or, I thought I did. But that boy…”

“He has a way of helping you see things in a different way,” Derek says, and watches her nod.

“Do I owe you an apology, Derek?” she asks, and there is no Alpha there. Just Derek’s mother, worried and upset. “Did you feel… pressured?”

“No, Mom, no,” Derek says. “Not by you. Some of the others, maybe. Uncle Peter sometimes. But you never made me feel like I had to move on from the Hale Pack and find something with someone else. I told you I couldn’t take the bite from any of you, and why, and you never made me feel… _wrong_ about who I was because of it.”

She clenches at his hand tightly. “It’s this boy, isn’t it?” she asks. “You want me to invite him.”

“If he wants that,” Derek says. “I don’t know that, yet. I don’t know how he feels about his own pack. But. I think he’d be a good fit with us.”

His mother looks at him, smiling, eyes dancing a little. “I think you’re right. He’s young, but with his father’s permission…” She seems unsure how to end that sentence. “Well. It wouldn’t be the first time someone needed parental permission, is all I mean.”

“I really,” Derek says, and stops because he doesn’t know how to say how he feels about Stiles. About everything. “I want him to make his choices based on what will make him happy,” he says finally.

“Derek,” his mom says gently. “We all want that. It’s still okay to hope that what makes him happy is the same thing that will make you happy.”

Derek’s throat tightens. “You sure about that?” he asks, voice wobbly.

“Yes,” she says simply. “And you’d better go back inside; I hear his Jeep.”

Derek stands abruptly. “Will you?” he asks. Hell, he almost begs. “If that’s what he wants and his father will allow it, will you invite him in?”

“I would invite anyone that would make you happy in, Derek,” his mom says with a pained little smile. “Even if it was just long enough to bite you.”

Derek flushes. “I’m never going to be able to do it like that,” he says. “I just can’t… there has to be something more.”

“I know,” she says. “I’m glad. He’s at the door.”

Derek drops a kiss on her cheek and darts back into the house and races to the front door.

Stiles looks flushed and disheveled, his messenger bag slung across his body like a shield. He’s giving Derek a wide eyed look. Derek realizes it’s probably because he isn’t wearing anything but a disreputable pair of cut of jeans meant mostly for swimming in. In spite of BiteZ, it’s probably the least amount of clothing Stiles has ever seen him in.

“Come in,” Derek says, and backs away from the door to give Stiles room to come in. Stiles’ messenger bag is bulging today; when Stiles slides past him into the house, the rough canvas scrapes across Derek’s belly, sending completely ridiculous amounts of endorphins crashing into his brain. “Come upstairs,” Derek says, before Stiles can scent him too strongly, and Stiles follows him, even though Derek can hear Stiles taking slow, deep breaths.

Derek makes it to the bedroom and closes the door behind him. Then he throws a shirt on and grabs up some jeans. Stiles jerks around so that his back is to Derek while he sheds the shorts and drags the jeans up his ass. “Thanks,” Derek says. “I didn’t mean to… I mean, there aren’t a lot of firm rules about how much you want to wear around here.”

“No, I get it,” Stiles says, peeking cautiously over his shoulder, and then turning all the way around, smiling a little. “My dad is a little weird about it, but he was bitten. When I was little my mom and I wouldn’t wear clothes until we knew he was coming home. It was like a game. We just pretended we’d been dressed all day. After she died, I mean. Years later, my dad said he always knew. He could smell that our clothes hadn’t been on long enough to really pick up our scents. So, yeah.”

“She sounds like she was great,” Derek says truthfully. 

“I’ll tell you all about her some time,” Stiles says, almost shyly. “You can interview me, if you want.”

“Listen,” Derek says, feeling urgent about it all the sudden. “Listen.”

“Wait!” Stiles says. “Before we. Before anything. I want to show you. And then if you’re freaked out, I’ll fuck off and leave you alone.”

Derek, horrified by the idea, tries to say that he’s never going to want Stiles to fuck off and leave him alone, but Stiles doesn’t give him the chance.

“Just--” he says, and upends his messenger bag over Derek’s bed. At least a dozen issues of BiteZ pour out of it, as well as assorted papers, pens, books, and what looks like a bag lunch. Stiles just shoves everything but the magazines to one side, and then his hands nervously pull them into a fairly orderly stack. “You have to look,” Stiles says breathily, “because even _I_ know this is firmly in creeper territory and you have every reason never to see me again, but sometimes when you look at me I think we’re thinking the same thing, so. If you’d just look so I know whether to stay or go. I mean, please, Derek; I don’t think my nerves can take much more than this.” He sounds almost scarily sincere about that.

Derek reaches out and catches his hand. Stiles goes very still, and tips his head to regard Derek’s hand in his. “Come on,” Derek says. “Look with me.”

He opens four of the magazines to his spreads, tugging them into a square on his bed, and gently urges Stiles close to his side as he lets his gaze wander over the pictures of himself.

Derek understands why Stiles feels like he needs to see these, even after he’d seen his April issue. April had been neat and precise, but the marks hadn’t been messy. Not like a real werewolf bite would be messy.

These are messy. These show the drag marks of teeth through flesh, they show blood and meat, and if anything, they look _more_ real than the neat wounds in the April issue. Not because the drawing is actually any better, though the drawing is actually great, Stiles clearly has a gift, but because the context is clearly more realistic. 

Derek isn’t sure how he feels about getting an erection by looking at his own skin mags, but it’s happening anyway. Stiles is breathing in so quickly he might hyperventilate. “Which are your favorites,” Derek asks, to distract him. Stiles makes an abortive little movement, clenches his shaking hand into a fist for a long second, and then reaches out for June of last year and flips to a picture in which Derek is wearing nothing but biking shorts, and even most of those are concealed in artful shadow. Derek’s head is tipped back, his eyes closed, his mouth very slightly open. Stiles’ pen has ravaged the left side of Derek’s chest, blood and torn skin and the marks of teeth etched into the page. Derek flips through some of the others and tips one toward Stiles. Derek is half-wearing a wetsuit -- he’s in the process of peeling it off his body -- and Stiles’ pen has mangled the top of one of his hipbones. Blood is dripping down from the wound in a diagonal stream, and there are several distincts fang marks, as well as the drag marks of other fangs that hadn’t sunk in as deeply.

Derek doesn’t let go of Stiles’ hand while they go through the entire stack, Stiles getting looser and looser as they progress and Derek makes no objections, plus Stiles must be able to smell Derek’s arousal now, which Derek thinks is so pervasive at this point that he can almost smell it himself.

On the bottom is issue fourteen, the one that Stiles’s had had two copies of. Derek takes a chance that Stiles is relatively calm, and steps around the bed to pull his own doctored copy out and sits it directly above Stiles’.

“I have to warn you, I’m not really in your league as far as artwork goes,” Derek says.

“It doesn’t matter,” Stiles breathes. “I just want to see where we… sync up.”

So they each take their own magazine and flip through them one page at a time. Derek in a deck chair wearing a pair of board shorts with fake snow piled all around him: Derek has one naked inner thigh torn and bloody and Stiles has the inside of Derek’s left elbow, turned up and helpless, completely savaged, blood dripping down Derek’s forearm and hand and puddling in the fake snow. Derek takes a deep breath, and they turn the next page. Derek in white leather pants walking barefoot across a field of snow, his thin black scarf draped around his neck: Derek has blood and teeth marks right above the scarf on the left side, just under the jaw; Stiles’ marks aren’t even a millimeter off, the bite mark more real looking, blood sheeting down Derek’s naked chest. Derek lying face down on a fluffy white rug with only a towel slung over his ass: Derek has drawn bite marks scattered in a staggered line all the way down the side of his body; Stiles has one bite mark at Derek’s hip, flesh torn and bloody, and another, less vicious one barely visible in the shadow at the back of Derek’s neck. Stiles’ hitches in an audible breath. The last of the set is Derek by candle light, on his back on the same rug, on leg cocked, his hand on his chest, the vee between thumb and forefinger framing one nipple: Derek has drawn rings of bite marks around the other nipple and another, deeper tear in the meat of his inner thigh; Stiles’ are almost identical, more realistic, but he’s done something to the pair of white boxer briefs Derek is wearing in the photo. The leg is bloody from the thigh wound, but there’s some kind of shading that makes the very vague outline of Derek’s package look much more prominent.

“Fuck,” Derek whispers.

“So,” Stiles says softly, licking his lips. “So, not freaky-in-a-bad way?”

Derek turns toward him, which might be a mistake considering how close they are already standing, but he does it anyway. “If both of our Alphas wouldn’t take turns beating us both into paste, I’d let you do it right now,” Derek says.

Stiles breathes out harshly, lashes fluttering against his cheeks. “You can’t say that, dude,” he says. “I have a limited supply of self control, and you have no idea how good you smell right now.”

“If…” Derek says. “If you want to do this, my Alpha will invite you into our pack.” Derek’s throat is dry. “If that’s what you want. I won’t pressure you; I know what kind of decision that is, and I don’t want you to feel…”

“Derek,” Stiles sighs. “I don’t want to be an Alpha. You’ve seen how I can be. Worst Alpha ever. I’ll have my dad pass the power on to someone else, and then there’s no point for me staying in the Beacon Hills pack.” He is silent for a little while. “You know, being born into a wolf pack means that you can’t die from the bite, but being bitten by a beta instead of an Alpha still doesn’t give you a very high chance of turning.” He says this like he feels he has to admit it to Derek, and that he thinks it might be a deal breaker.

“Actually, being born into a pack means my chances are about one in ten.” Stiles looks at him. “It probably still won’t happen right away,” Derek says. “And while I’m still human, I can’t handle that much damage, so we’ll have to go slow.” Stiles’ lips are pulling up into a sweet smile, his eyes wide and hopeful. “But you should get plenty of opportunities,” Derek finishes breathlessly, caught up in the warmth of Stiles’ brown eyes.

“I need to talk to my dad,” Stiles says. He’s also gratifyingly breathless. “The only thing that might be a problem is my age.” He looks a little crushed at the possibility.

Derek, without even needing to consider it, says, “If that’s the only problem, then it’s not a problem. We’ll wait. I’ll wait, Stiles.”

Stiles gives him bright amber eyes again, this time for at least thirty seconds; Derek can see his wolf clearly. The short hairs on the back of Derek’s neck are prickling with it, and he’s almost unbearably hard.

“Derek,” Stiles growls, a deep note rumbling in his throat. “I have to touch you. You have to let me touch you, just a little. I have good control, but not being able to smell myself on you is…”

Derek turns around and offers the back of his neck to Stiles.

Stiles lets out a deep, throaty growl, and closes in to press his body along Derek’s back. He presses his face into Derek’s neck and inhales like he might never stop, and then bites down gently on the back of Derek’s neck. His teeth are human blunt for the first two or three seconds, and then are bristling and sharp, pricking at his skin, but not even close to drawing blood. Derek is so hard he gasps out several heated sounds, not even trying to stop them, since Stiles knows, Stiles can smell it on him, and he wishes for werewolf senses just so he could smell Stiles’ scent on his own skin. Stiles licks at the back of his neck, making a low sound of contentment, and then shoves his hands up under Derek’s t-shirt, pressing his scent into Derek’s skin with his palms. The teeth vanish from the back of Derek’s neck, and then Stiles is rubbing his cheek against Derek’s shoulder and Derek’s throat.

Eventually Stiles pulls away. When Derek turns back to face him, he’s entirely human again, and Derek is a little disappointed.

“Your mom is going to gut me,” Stiles says hoarsely.

Derek smiles. “She read your article,” he says. “I think she feels like you already gutted her.”

Stiles looks a little pained. “There was no way to make it less awful than it was,” he says.

“I know,” Derek says. “I read it, too. It was amazing.”

Stiles blushes with pleasure. “You still want to do the last one? The one about why you do what you do?”

“Yes,” Derek says. And then, because he’s impatient, he asks, “When do you think you’ll talk to your dad?”

Stiles takes a deep breath and turns to the bed, cramming all of his stuff back into his bag. “I’m already going to be in trouble for cutting out today, so I’ll do it now,” he says. “Then at least I can give him a reason for cutting out. Can I tell him he can call your mom?”

Derek nods. Stiles slings his bag across his shoulder. Aside from his flushed cheeks, and the fact that he probably reeks of Derek, he looks more or less like he always does. 

“I have to ask you something,” Derek says. “I don’t want to insult you, but I’m twenty-three, Stiles, and you’re a lot younger than me, and I already have problems connecting with people, so I hope you’ll try to understand.”

Stiles gives him a steady look. “You want to know if I’ll stay with you, after.”

Derek feels his eyes widen.

“If you could smell me like I can smell you, you wouldn’t have to ask,” Stiles says gently. “I’ll stay, Derek. It doesn’t matter to me if you’re a human or a werewolf, except that it matters to you. I’ll stay no matter what.”

Derek feels almost dizzy with relief, and can feel himself smiling. “Okay,” he says. “Keep me, um, posted. I mean, let me know what’s going on.”

Stiles grins. “You’re going to be sorry you asked,” he smirks. “I can text like the wind.”

**

Stiles doesn’t text him, though, not for hours, and when Laura knocks on the door to tell him has a visitor, Derek leaps to his feet. Laura wrinkles her nose, and hisses, “Jesus, Derek, you reek of him.”

Derek runs a hand through his hair. “I know, I know. I’ll shower after he leaves. I just wanted him to still be able to still smell…”

“Not _him_ ,” Laura whispers. “Your visitor, I mean, is not _him_. It’s the Sheriff.”

Derek feels a little faint. “Oh, shit,” he whispers. “Shit, oh shit, oh shit.”

“No kidding,” Laura whispers, and grabs him and runs her hands and face all over his neck and chest; Derek doesn’t really think that’s going to do it, but it’s the best he can do right now. “Why didn’t you shower?” Laura demands.

“I wanted him to…” Derek tries to say, and then she’s pawing at him again, softer and more apologetic this time.

“No, I get it. Okay. But that’s the best I can do. So good luck.”

“Thanks, Laura,” Derek says awkwardly, and forces himself to put one foot in front of the other until he’s heading downstairs, at which point momentum kind of takes over.

The Sheriff is standing in the living room, a glass of iced tea in his hand; one second he’s smiling at something Derek’s mom is saying, and then he tips his head back, scenting the air, and Derek forces his way down the rest of the stairs with a dense ball of dread in his belly. The Sheriff turns on him with narrow, accusing eyes, his free hand dropping to the butt of his gun. Derek can only assume that Stiles had managed a shower before they’d talked, because that is a definite indication surprise right there. Derek’s mom’s expression isn’t much better, but at least she isn’t fondling a weapon.

“What were you thinking?” his mother asks. She has that disappointed tone, the one that Derek has spent most of his life trying to avoid because of the way it makes him feel small and stupid.

“He said he has good control, but being around me when I didn’t smell like him was straining it,” Derek says honestly.

Derek’s mother still looks seriously displeased, but mystifyingly, the Sheriff seems to have relaxed a little.

“And you didn’t touch him?” the Sheriff asks.

Derek feels himself flushing. “I held his hand,” he admits, kind of at a loss to explain how that feels like it’s totally justifiable in the fifth grade, but somehow carries inappropriate overtones now that he’s twenty-three. “But other than that, no. He did all the touching.”

“He didn’t bite you?” the Sheriff asks sharply.

“No, he was careful,” Derek says. 

The Sheriff sighs, but at least his hand falls away from the butt of his gun.

Derek’s mom says, “At least come all the way into the room, Derek,” sounding exasperated. Derek heroically doesn’t point out that the Sheriff had had his hand on his gun, and closes the distance. “Please sit down, Sheriff,” Derek’s mom says, and the Sheriff gives Derek a long look, but sits at one end of the couch. Derek circles around and sits at the other end without prompting, and his mom takes a seat in one of the plush lounge chairs.

“He was like that with his mom,” the Sheriff says unexpectedly. “Now we know it was the ADHD, but when he was little, all we knew is that if he didn’t smell like her and she didn’t smell like him, he lost it pretty easily. I was worried for him when she died, but he did okay. His control was already better with the Adderall, and he still needed to scent mark me pretty often, but it’s been a while since he’s actually asked.” He peers at Derek. “How was he, after?” he asks.

Derek flushes -- it’s just a little weird to be asked, even though scent marking isn’t usually or even very often sexual, though in this case, it really, really had been -- but says, “Better. We talked about him talking to you. He was cracking jokes again by the time he left. He was in control, or I wouldn’t have let him go. I’d have had my Alpha soothe him down.”

The Sheriff nods. “He’s sixteen, you know,” he says. “And my only child.” He looks up to meet Derek’s mom’s gaze this time. “I’ve always known he didn’t want to be the Alpha.” He smiles a little. “As funny as it might be to imagine it, he’s not suited.” He turns to looks at Derek. “I even expected him to meet someone and want to join another pack. I just didn’t think he’d decide to fixate on a skin mag model seven years older than him at _sixteen_.”

Derek cocks his chin, refusing to blush this time. He is not ashamed of his job, and he won’t let someone else make him feel shame over it. He also seriously objects to the word ‘fixate,’ as though Stiles’ father thinks Derek was just someone who happened to be both good looking and readily available, and that Stiles would eventually move on with his life with someone more appropriate. “It’s not a skin mag,” he says firmly. “Everything I do for BiteZ is strictly rated for sixteen and older. I’ve never been photographed in anything less than I would wear to the beach. Furthermore, what I do for a living is irrelevant as long as your son and I don’t have a problem with it. And he’s not ‘fixated’ on me; I’m not his junior high crush.”

“No, you’re his high school crush,” the Sheriff says, but there’s not a lot of bite to it. “And what you do for a living is entirely relevant as regards my underaged son.”

“He isn’t underaged to see anything I do,” Derek says more sharply than he means to. “My job is the least significant part of my relationship with Stiles. He approached me because of it, but the rest of it has all been spending time together and talking about my life, and about his.”

“He made the case for that already,” the Sheriff says, still pretty mildly.

“I don’t do things casually,” Derek says. “That includes Stiles.”

“Stiles is _sixteen_ ,” the Sheriff repeats. “He hasn’t even decided where he wants to go to college.”

“He wants to go to USC Annenberg,” Derek says. “He wants a Masters in Digital Communications and at least a Bachelors in Journalism. He knows that a career in Journalism is changing with all the technical advances, but the field of Communications is huge, and he can get everything he needs there. He’s already applied for some scholarships and financial aid.” Derek pauses. “He knows you can’t afford it; I’m not surprised he didn’t tell you.”

The Sheriff looks down, his jaw taut. “You have known each other about two weeks,” he says stiffly.

Derek’s mom’s eyes go a little soft. “How long did you know your wife before you asked her to marry you, Sheriff?”

“This is not the same,” the Sheriff insists.

“How do you know it isn’t the same?” she asks. “Because Derek’s human? Because he’s a man?”

“Of course not,” the Sheriff says, back straightening. “But if it was the same, Stiles, at least, would _know_...” He trails off, and turns to look at Derek. “But you wouldn’t,” he says softly.

“You’re talking about mating scents,” Derek says, almost a question. “Because if you are, then, no. I wouldn’t know.” He desperately wants to know if they _are_ talking about mating scents, and if they are, what that means.

“It’s not like they’re universal, or even universally correct,” the Sheriff says, but he sounds uncertain now.

“At this point, the only one that can know with any certainty is Stiles,” Derek’s mom says. “And even then, he may be too inexperienced to recognize it, if that’s what it is.”

“I’ve never heard of it focusing on a human,” the Sheriff says. “The point is to make the pack stronger.”

“You don’t think Stiles turning Derek would make my pack stronger?” she asks with a little menace in her tone.

“It’s supposed to make _Stiles’_ pack stronger,” the Sheriff says gruffly.

“He did say something,” Derek interrupts, because he does not want to be caught between two territorial Alphas, not even if one of them is his mother.

They both turn to look at him.

“I asked him if he planned to stay,” he says awkwardly. “After I was turned.” The Sheriff looks a little outraged, and then a little pitying, which Derek could have lived without, but doesn’t say anything. “He said that if I could smell him like he could smell me, I wouldn’t have to ask. That he didn’t care if I was a human or a werewolf, except that it mattered to me. He would stay no matter what.”

There is a long silence. 

“I’ll have to emancipate him,” the Sheriff finally says a little thickly.

Derek’s mom leans in and puts her hand on the Sheriff’s knee, an almost unheard of level of physical comfort between Alphas, and says, “We’ll take good care of him.”

“And _you_ ,” the Sheriff says, turning suddenly fierce eyes on Derek, “will not pressure him into anything sexual until he’s ready.”

Derek thinks that he’s not likely to be the one pressuring, but just holds the Sheriff’s gaze and says, “I want Stiles to be happy. I would never do anything to jeopardize his happiness.”

The Sheriff squints at him. “What about your job?” he asks, but almost in a reasonable tone of voice. “What if he doesn’t want his…” The Sheriff seems to have to chew on the word for a minute, before spitting out, “...mate showing that much skin to strangers?”

Derek thinks it’s not going to be a problem, but tries to think about it anyway. “I don’t know what it’s like to be a werewolf,” he admits. “I don’t know what it’s like to be possessive like that. I don’t know that I think Stiles will be possessive like that, even, but if he decides he hates it, I’ll find something else to do. Maybe actually use my degree.”

“You have a degree?” the Sheriff asks, but this time it’s almost conversational, like he’s merely curious.

“It didn’t occur to you to wonder what I’d been doing between high school and last year?” Derek asks, probably not quite concealing his exasperation. “I have a Masters in Mechanical Engineering. I want to design better methods of ground transportation, specifically cars, but not excluding trains and busses and motorcycles.” Awkwardly, he says, “All of our vehicles run on ethanol; I made the modifications myself. It isn’t a long term solution, but is the best I can do right now without a lab and…” He trails off, embarrassed.

The Sheriff looks at him for a long moment. Then, softly, and with obvious sincerity, he asks, “Then why aren’t you doing that?”

“Because I wasn’t ready to live alone,” Derek says honestly, but feeling a little brittle and vulnerable about it. “I still needed my pack, I wasn’t emotionally… ready to leave home. There’s nowhere I could do that in Beacon Hills, and I couldn’t imagine living alone.”

The Sheriff looks a little like he’s re-evaluating Derek on the spot. “But when Stiles goes to college…” he says, and Derek can feel his smile without being able to control it.

“Then I would have a lot of opportunities to pursue,” Derek admits. “Even in the meantime, while he’s here, I have time to do a little scouting to see what I can find. My degree is barely a year old. I can make sure I keep myself updated in the field while he finishes high school.”

The Sheriff slumps against the back of the couch. “I’m not usually an asshole,” he tries.

Derek surprises himself by laughing. The Sheriff looks at him, but not like he’s pissed. “No, I get it,” Derek says. “I really do. I want to take care of Stiles. I can only imagine how trying that can be, even without him being deliberately difficult. I can totally see myself being an asshole over him.”

The Sheriff quirks a smile. “Yeah, well. He’s a handful. But he’s worth every second.”

“I believe you,” Derek says quietly. “Sheriff, I’ve wanted the bite since I can remember. I’ve always wanted to be a werewolf. I’ve had offers, and not just from fans of the magazine. I’ve been courted. I just… I wanted it to be about more than just being turned. I don’t attach easily.” He shrugs a little helplessly. “I’m not sure how it even happened, with Stiles, so fast. It was just there, sometime, I’m not even sure when. It’s just… things were so personal.”

“Yeah, I read the articles,” the Sheriff says, also fairly gently. “I can see that. I just wanted to know for sure that whatever you feel for Stiles wasn’t going to pass away once you actually turn.” The Sheriff holds up a hand when Derek opens his mouth. “No, you don’t have to tell me. I can smell it on you.”

Derek blushes.

Derek’s mom looks delighted.

**

Derek is locked in his room, whispering into the phone, even though he knows the room is soundproof and it’s stupid.

“They’re talking about the effect on the full moon and the presence of the pack and how much trauma my body can take and, Christ, I think they’re making a _schedule_ ,” Derek whispers, halfway between horrified and embarrassed. 

Derek can hear Stiles’ Jeep rumbling in the background. “I know, my dad had a calendar out when I came outside, Derek, a _calendar_.” Stiles’ voice is slightly panicked.

They are both silent for several seconds.

“I want it to be…” Stiles says at the same time that Derek says, “I don’t want…” And they both fall silent again.

“Really,” Stiles whispers, “I mean, it’s really all over but the paperwork, right?” He sounds breathless now. “The Alphas have agreed. No one has told _me_ that we have to wait. Has your mom…?”

Derek hitches in a breath. “No. I mean, sex is off the table until your emancipation goes through, but no one has said anything about…”

“You want to have sex with me?” Stiles asks, his tone all twined up with hope and lust and uncertainty.

“Of course I, how could you think I’d want…” Derek stammers, and then because he remembers being sixteen, Derek clearly and articulately says, “I want to have sex with you so badly it’s like it burns me up just to think about it.”

There are another long silent series of seconds during which Derek can clearly hear Stiles panting into the phone.

“My dad already thinks I’m at Scott’s,” Stiles says finally.

Derek swallows. He’s so hard he thinks he’s a little dizzy with lack of blood to his brain. That’s probably why he’s even considering this, right? It’s crazy, it’s not like they’ll be able to hide it, but…

“Where can you meet me?” Derek asks throatily.

“Don’t sound sexy like that,” Stiles says pleadingly. “I still have to drive, Derek.”

“It has to be someplace far enough away, we can’t just park on the side of the road somewhere…” Although Derek thinks he would totally let Stiles park on the side of the road somewhere.

“Howling Rock?” Stiles asks breathily. 

It’s far enough into the Preserve to be safely away from Hale property, but has a real road leading up to it, something the Camaro can handle, unlike some of the roads in the Preserve.

“I’ll meet you there in an hour,” Derek says hoarsely, and hears Stiles whimper a little. “Will you be okay driving?"

“Yeah, yes, I mean, I’m not sure I’m really getting enough oxygen to my brain, but I’ll make it.” Stiles voice is hoarse, too, and laced with hilarity. “Oh my God, they’re going to kill us.”

“I don’t care,” Derek whispers. “I don’t care, I don’t care.”

“Okay, I’ll be there. Hurry. I mean, don’t wreck your car, but hurry,” Stiles says.

“Okay,” Derek says. “Okay.”

He’s grateful when Stiles hangs up because he isn’t sure he would’ve been able to do it.

He takes a fast but thorough shower because he knows he has to reek of lust, and then throws on some clothes that he barely sees. His heart is thudding in his chest, and he does some deep breathing exercises to calm down, otherwise someone is going to notice and he has no rational explanation.

“Where are you off to?” Derek’s mom asks from the living room, but she looks mostly just curious, and she’s still holding the phone up to her ear, head cocked in that way that means she’s listening to someone on the other end. Probably the Sheriff.

“Just need to drive off some excess energy,” Derek carefully doesn’t lie.

She smiles a little. “Don’t stay out too late; we have a breakfast meeting with the Sheriff and Stiles and the attorney.”

“I won’t,” Derek says, and shuts the front door behind him, walking at a moderately sedate pace down to where his car is parked.

He conscientiously abides by every speed limit sign and road rule, but his brains feel like scrambled eggs inside his skull, and he’s sweating with anticipation and desire.

Stiles’ jeep is already parked when Derek gets there, and Derek tries hard to get his hormones under control, but it’s impossible. As soon as he pulls up, Stiles appears in front of his headlights, looking manic and terrified and hectic with excitement.

Derek gets out of the car, and before he can process it, Stiles is on him, arms around Derek’s neck, legs wrapped around Derek’s waist, rubbing his face against Derek’s cheek and neck as though he can’t stand the smell of Derek's scent all alone, without Stiles’ layered over it. Derek catches him and holds him there, arms tight around what is a surprisingly muscular back. Stiles’ body pressed against his is enough to drag a groan out of his throat, and Stiles growls, that deep, animal predator sound werewolves make, and Derek’s knees feel unsteady enough that he leans back against the Camaro to brace himself.

“Oh my God, you smell so good,” Stiles almost whines, his face buried in Derek’s hair for a moment, and then nosing at his chin. He pulls back a little, and Derek can see the amber flare of his eyes, shining like lamps in the darkness.

Derek checks carefully, because as much as he wants, he isn’t stupid, but only Stiles’ eyes are shifted, which is great because Derek feels like if he doesn’t kiss Stiles he could die.

Stiles moans and opens his mouth immediately, tongue hot darting out to lick at Derek’s lips and then stroke along Derek’s tongue. He’s just clumsy enough about it to indicate that he’s done it before, but not often, and Derek is probably a bad person, because he’s glad. The first minute is rough and desperate, and then it eases into something less frantic, though Stiles, if anything, is clinging even more tightly to Derek. Derek is a little breathless from Stiles’s werewolf strength trapping his rib cage, and after a minute, Stiles must realize it, because he loosens his grip, and then pulls back altogether. 

Derek lets Stiles slide down his body, aware almost immediately that that had been a bad idea, when they both groan at the friction.

“You’re sure?” Stiles begs, pressing his face against Derek’s chest so that it comes out muffled. “You’re sure, Derek, you’re sure?”

“I’m sure,” Derek says, and feels Stiles go over abruptly boneless with relief, leaning against Derek like a ragdoll, limbs all floppy and loose, and Derek has to smile at Stiles even through his haze of lust.

“Oh, thank God, because I could wait, I could if I had to, Derek, but if I have to, you have to go _right now_.”

Derek brushes his hands across the velvet of Stiles’ close cropped hair, and then tips his face up to kiss him again. Stiles slings his arms around Derek’s neck again, cooperative and clinging.

He breaks away breathlessly and catches Derek’s hand, leading him around the front of the Camaro -- headlights still blazing, or Derek would be completely blind out here -- and then around the front of the rock Howling Rock was named for. Spread out on the ground is a sleeping bag with a thick white towel draped across it. Derek can see the little first aid station Stiles has set up beside everything, and smiles.

“I know it’s not exactly high romance,” Stiles says wryly, “but I had to stick with what I could buy at CVS or what I already had in the jeep.”

They sink down onto the sleeping bag, and Stiles shoves his face into Derek’s belly, hands stroking at his chest through his shirt. “It’s going to hurt,” he says, eyes brown again as he looks up into Derek’s face. Derek barely hears the words due to the proximity of Stiles’ face to his cock, but eventually the sound penetrates, or more truthfully, the worried look on Stiles’ face penetrates, because he nods.

“I know,” he says roughly, and Stiles’ eyes flash amber at him again for a few seconds before he gets a handle on himself.

“Okay, so where?” Stiles asks, as Stiles’ fingers, apparently completely unselfconsciously, unbutton Derek’s shirt. Once it’s open he shoves his face against his belly again, rubbing just for a second, and then straightens.

“Where do you want?” Derek asks, because Derek wants it anywhere (or everywhere), and he wants it to be good for Stiles.

“What about, you know, BiteZ?” Stiles asks. “I could… it could be on your back or…” 

But Derek doesn’t have to be a werewolf to know that that isn’t what Stiles’ wants. Stiles is a werewolf, and werewolves are possessive; he’ll want his bite somewhere deliberate, he’ll want a sweet spot.

“No,” Derek says, and shrugs his shirt off his shoulders. “Where do _you_ want?”

Stiles carefully traces Derek’s right collarbone, and the drops his hand to span it along the dip of his waist, squeezing lightly. “Dealer’s choice,” he whispers, voice a low rumble, not quite a full growl, his eyes amber again.

“Take off your shirt,” Derek says, because it matters to him, even if it goes no further, because it’s not sex, but it’s sexual, and Derek wants to see Stiles.

Stiles shrugs off his button up and drags his t-shirt over his head. He’s shockingly more muscular than Derek would have guessed, just built slim and lithe, but wide in the shoulders, and Derek doesn’t resist the impulse to run his hands over Stiles’ chest and belly and shoulders, his fingertips tingling at the smooth heat of his skin. Stiles’ makes a brief whining sound and leans in, and Derek strokes his hands up Stiles’ back.

“Shift,” Derek says, and Stiles’ does, his beta form lean and dense with muscle, his eyes tracking Derek like prey now, his nostrils flaring. He lets out that deep, basso growl that grinds heat between Derek’s hipbones, and Derek reaches for him, touching the coarse fur of his head and running down his nape, and then pulls Stiles’ face toward his collarbone.

Between one moment and the next, Stiles is straddling him, burying his nose in Derek’s throat for a long, still moment, and then pulling his head back with a clawed hand in Derek’s hair. Derek lets Stiles push him onto his back -- couldn’t stop him even if he wanted to, he knows, and shudders -- and Stiles noses at his collarbone for an instant, then scrapes across it with his sharp teeth. Derek’s hips jerk upward and Stiles growls, weight suddenly descending on Derek, their cocks flush together as Stiles draws a line of fiery pain across Derek’s chest with his fangs. This time they both jerk, and then grind roughly, and Derek’s heart is slamming against the inside of his ribcage, and he knows when Stiles tenses to strike, and the pain is a white-hot spiral that doesn’t stop Derek from coming in his pants, groaning, his back arched up for Stiles’ fangs. He feels Stiles’ hips stutter as well, and then, with one last, low growl, Stiles tugs his teeth carefully free of the bite, which feels abruptly cool in the night air.

Stiles has Derek’s blood on his mouth and he still looks hungry; he eases his face back toward the dull-sharp throb of the bite warily.

“It’s okay,” Derek says, and cups the back of Stiles’ head, and Stiles laps at the wound, sending sparks of pain and lust shivering down Derek’s spine. When he pulls away and shifts back, Derek’s blood is still on his mouth. Impulsively, Derek pulls him down into a kiss, the copper tang filling his mouth with the taste of his own blood, and Stiles’ kisses are lazy, possessive, heated, and sweet all at once.

Stiles is too practical to lie there and neck while Derek is bleeding -- Derek probably would have. He sits up and gazes at the bite on Derek’s collar bone and growls one more time, not quite the same growl of his beta form, but still enough like the wolf to make Derek’s skin erupt in goosebumps.

Then Stiles is wiping blood away from the bite, which is neither very shallow nor very deep, and putting pressure on it with a gauze pad until it stops seeping blood. He considers a bottle of spray antiseptic for a moment, as though not sure what he’d been thinking when he’d bought it, but then looks determined and prepares to use it anyway; Derek knows it will drown out the scent of Derek’s blood, can see on Stiles’ face how much the doesn’t want that, and Derek snatches the bottle out of Stiles’ hands and then tosses it into the woods. Stiles smiles bashfully at him, then he neatly, methodically bandages it up, looking only a little wistful as he does it.

He slides down onto one elbow next to Derek, and then, as though deciding that space issues are trivial at this point, lets himself roll against Derek’s side, cheek resting on Derek’s chest.

“Thank you,” Derek says, and Stiles laughs a little hysterically.

“Are you kidding me, ‘thank you,’” he scoffs. “That was the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”

“Me, too,” Derek says, and they breathe together and Stiles’ bite on Derek’s chest throbs, and Derek has never been so content.

**

Predictably, Derek’s mother is waiting for him when he gets home. She scents the air for a microsecond, opens her mouth, and Derek says, “It’s not deep, and we didn’t go past second base.”

She looks a little shocked at his forthrightness, and then sighs.

“Well, we should have known better,” she says, shaking her head and even smiling a little. “How do you feel?”

“Not like a werewolf,” Derek says, but can’t quite help grinning. “But otherwise great.”

“You know, it really is more effective if you do it with the pack, with the full moon,” she says. “I know it’s… intimate for you, but at least think about it.”

“I will,” Derek says, and he will, because he wants it to work, but he wouldn’t have given tonight up for anything.

**

_”It was actually kind of a creepy thing,” Derek tells me. “I have a degree in Mechanical Engineering, and I was working on modifying all the Hale vehicles to run on ethanol, and I was standing in line at the hardware store, and this huge guy behind me says, ‘Hey kid, you ever think about modeling?’” Derek chuckles. “I was sure he was hitting on me, but he gave me his card, and I went out and picked up a couple of issues, and it all seemed legit.”_

_I ask him if he’d thought of it in terms of sex or as a way of advertising his own desires, and he looks a little embarrassed._

_“Not advertising, really, but I’ve already said, the bite is… well, it’s sexual for me. So, I can’t say I didn’t think of it that way, until, really, my first shoot.” He shakes his head, looking nostalgic. “It was a disaster. I couldn’t stop blushing, the whole things was just a nightmare.”_

_Clearly he had gotten over that, I point out, and Derek grins a little. “Yeah, we have this receptionist, Isaac, looks about twelve, adorable mop of curls, and they, they didn’t even warn me, they just locked me into the break room with him for half an hour, and between him talking about his sex life and telling dirty jokes that seemed just **wrong** coming out of his sweet angel face, I just basically lost all ability to blush.”_

_I laugh at the idea -- I really wish I could have been there -- and Derek shrugs. “It wasn’t a problem after that, and it’s fair to say that at least some of it was still kind of sexual, but mostly it wasn’t. Mostly it was just my job. The fanmail was sometimes terrifying, but mostly funny, and sometimes sweet. I don’t know._

_“I didn’t think about it as advertising, but my Editor, Boyd, says he really hired me because I was ‘Alpha bait.’”_

_This reporter is pleased to announce that Derek Hale has, in fact, not lost the ability to blush entirely._

_What is Alpha bait?_

_“It’s, um.” He rubs at the back of his neck. “It’s someone with the kind of physique that most resembles that of an Alpha. Not someone too young or too sweet or cute, but someone who looks like, if he **was** a werewolf, might be able to beat the crap out of you. Can I say crap?”_

_I assure him that he can say ‘crap.’_

_“Anyway,” he says. “That was the lure, and while I got my share of fanmail from across the spectrum, including regular humans, a lot of it **was** Alphas, but it was really weird. Most of the humans and a good chunk of the betas seemed to feel like they had some kind of personal understanding of me, based on these four or five pictures I did every month, but the Alphas were always really respectful. The made it clear that they admired me, and a few invited me to visit their packs, but they were always careful not to assume.” He shrugs one shoulder. “I guess I thought it would be the other way around, though I can’t think now why I thought so, with my Mother as a role model.”_

_We both laugh; I’ve met Mrs. Hale. Terrifying woman. Wonderful, but terrifying._

_Of course, we all know that this is just the prelude, because gossip runs like wildfire through Beacon Hills, so you already know that I bit Derek Hale last month. (I BIT DEREK HALE LAST MONTH; I PLAN TO BITE HIM AGAIN SOON!)_

_So the last few questions are relatively simple. I ask if he plans to continue on with BiteZ, considering the new scar on his chest (where I **bit** Derek Hale)._

_Derek shrugs. “My mate doesn’t seem to have a problem with it…” He grins at me, and I make a fool out of myself grinning back, and also spill my coffee. “And my Editor is curious about how a spread with an actual bite mark will be received, so at least one more spread probably. After that, I don’t know. I’ve got a couple of years to wait,” again, he blushes, “and some people have mentioned that they might be interested in seeing what I can do with their personal vehicles, with emissions and different fuel sources, which would be something to put on my resume when, uh.”_

_I take pity on him, and encourage him to say ‘when I get out of high school,’ but instead he chokes out, “When you go to college.”_

_I ask if he has any regrets, more because I feel like I have to than because I really want to know (eek!) and he smiles one of those amazing smiles at me, the one that I told you about in the first article, that he does with his whole body, and forces you to smile back whether you want to or not, and says, “Not if you don’t.”_

_~finis~_

**

Derek shifts for the first time three days after the first full moon after Stiles’s seventeenth birthday. They all know it’s coming, they can smell the wolf in him as soon as the bite takes, but it doesn’t matter at all. Half the town seems mad with joy for them, and when Derek finally runs with his pack, Stiles keeping careful pace, the whole Sheriff’s department runs with them, along with a few other smaller packs that call Beacon Hills home.

Derek stops to howl with joy, Stiles circling and bumping up against him to get him running again, and it’s almost more than he can stand.

After, when they’re all shifted back and at least marginally dressed, they eat slow roasted pulled pork and the full dinner spread at barely six o’clock in the morning, and Derek’s life is perfect, perfect, perfect.


End file.
